


They Never Talk About It - a spangel ficlets collection

by kally77



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:31:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kally77/pseuds/kally77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. They Never Talk About It

They don’t talk about it. God knows they never talk about anything that matters. It’d go against everything they are, everything they claim to be to talk.

That doesn’t mean they don’t remember.

It’s almost midnight on a dreary February night when Spike enters Angel’s office. Hands in his duster’s pockets, he’s projecting the usual smoothness and swagger. Inside, he’s a mess. He always is, on this night, every year. He has been for a hundred and twenty odd years.

He almost breathes a sigh of relief when he sees the bottle waiting on the conference table, and the two glasses next to it. Angel remembered.

“You’re late,” Angel says gruffly. He doesn’t even look up from the papers he’s reading at his desk. “It’s tomorrow in England already.”

Spike shrugs and doesn’t answer. Walking to the table, he twists the cap off the scotch bottle and pours two generous glasses, spilling a few drops on the expensive wood. He wonders if it’ll stain. He kind of hopes it will.

“Still the right day here,” he says as he picks up both glasses and goes to Angel. He hands him one, then raises the other. “To Dru,” he says, pushing the name past the heavy knot down his throat. “Beautiful, insane, and much too clever for all our sakes.”

 _To my Sire_ , he adds silently, and tries not to wonder where she is. Tries not to wonder what he would do if she turned up on his doorstep tomorrow.

“To William,” Angel replies, and their glasses clanking together sound like crystal chimes – like Drusilla’s laugh.

Spike closes his eyes tight and empties his glass in one long swallow.

He’s not sure when, or how, he ends up sitting on Angel’s lap. He just knows nothing could be more perfect than Angel’s fangs sinking into his flesh, reopening decade-old scars. Only minutes later, he realizes he was wrong when Angel’s cock slides inside him. He comes with Angel’s tongue shoved down his throat and that obnoxious birthday song echoing through his mind.


	2. All Your Fault

The small bottles in the plane were absolutely ridiculous. Thankfully enough, Angel has the real deal in his office.

Moving on is a hell of a lot easier with twenty-year-old whiskey permeating every cell of one’s body, Angel thinks as he watches Spike move over him. He would like to share his insight, but his tongue feels thick and clumsy, too much so to form words. There’s still something else he can do, though.

Clutching Spike’s hip and back, he pulls him down to him, then rolls their bodies until he’s the one moving over Spike, pushing deeper inside him with every roll of his hips. He rests on his forearms and leans down to press his mouth to Spike’s, then pushes his tongue past those always-smirking lips. Spike’s mouth tastes of whiskey, and a little bit of vodka, but beyond that the taste is all too familiar – and purely Spike.

It’s been too long, much too long, and Angel wonders why. With alcohol blurring the edges of reality, he imagines other roads he could have taken.

What if he had told William about the soul and asked for his help instead of fleeing Romania?

What if he had stopped him from killing that Slayer in China, and offered him his neck instead?

What if he had stepped out of that submarine with him?

What if he had gone to him, the first night Spike and Drusilla arrived in Sunnydale?

What if—

His kiss turns harsher. His fangs drop before he even knows it, and he tears at Spike’s tongue and lips, feasting on his blood even as he pushes just a little more inside his body, seeking oblivion along with solace. Trying to move on even as he clings to a long gone past.

“It’s all your fault,” he mutters into Spike’s neck, some time later, when the sun warms them both through those cursed windows.

Spike’s hand pauses for a second before it starts combing through Angel’s hair again.

“Isn’t it always?” he says softly.

Angel doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.


	3. Too Long

After the Fred-shaped bird has insisted on patching them both up, after the whole gang has ranted and moaned about the evilness of the place, and how of course the fight would have ended differently if it had been real, if the cup had contained sweet salvation rather than bitterness, after it’s all said and done, Spike finds himself standing in the lobby of Wolfram & Hart.

Alone.

He has haunted the place for weeks. He has dreamed of getting away for just as long. But now that he could… he can’t.

Where would he go?

“Still here?”

Looking up, Spike finds Angel standing by the open doors of his office. He doesn’t reply, and only allows himself a scowl.

“I thought you’d be long gone by now,” Angel continues. Who cares about the soul? He’s just as ruthless, just as cruel as Angelus.

Spike still doesn’t reply. He starts walking toward the elevator, and presses the call button with a vengeful finger. He won. He beat the bloody bastard. So why does he feel like he’s lost everything – again?

“How long since you had a drink?” Angel asks, and now there’s just the edge of a sigh in his words.

The elevator doors open, but rather than stepping in Spike turns to look at him. He raises an eyebrow.

“A while,” he says.

Angel nods. “And how long since you had a decent drink?”

Spike snorts. He doesn’t actually remember. The Watcher’s scotch wasn’t too bad, the night after the tower, but there wasn’t much of it once they divided it between all of them. “Too long.”

Another nod, and Angel turns away, throwing over his shoulder, “Whiskey or vodka?”

Before the night is over, they’ve emptied both bottles.

The next morning, his head still ringing with church bells celebrating Christmas, Easter and the end of days all rolled into one, Spike only has one question for Angel.

“How long since you had a decent shag?”

The ghost of a smile flutters on Angel’s lips. “Too long.”


	4. Broken Nacre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Shells

They don’t talk.

It never ends well, when they talk. They know each other’s weaknesses too well. A few words suffice to pick at the scab of old wounds and make them bleed like fresh ones. And when they’re both hurting, when words have done as much damage as they can, they move on to fists and fangs. More blood shed, this one staining hands and skin rather than souls and hearts.

So they don’t talk.

Spike tried to get drunk in the plane on those ridiculously small bottles, and it was all right to talk then. Talking when drinking doesn’t count. But he’s sober, they both are when they land, when they get in that limo, when they return to Hell Central. Sober enough to hurt and mourn and blame themselves for what they couldn’t have changed. Sober enough to blame each other.

But they don’t talk.

They’ve got things to do. Threads to snip. Messes to clean. Decisions to explain. Apologies… no, it’s too late for apologies. They do it all. They do what they have to. It doesn’t change anything in the end. She’s gone and that’s all there is to it. A body remains, a shell used by her killer, a shell they can’t bear the thought to smash for the bits of nacre still shining through. They go back to the place that will never again resonate with her laugh, never again be lit up by her smile.

Then, Spike talks.

Quiet words. True words. Each of them, even the ones about him, the ones about Angel, is a eulogy. The girl earned better than what she was given in the end. He has the sinking feeling she was only the first. As few as they are, the words are too much. Spike walks out, sits in the lobby, watches life swirl around him. The ebb and flow of workers announces night. Spike could leave, now. Go to a bar and get drunk properly – mourn properly. He doesn’t move. Angel comes out of his office. He just stops by Spike, doesn’t even look at him, just… pauses. He smells like the tears he won’t shed. Like the kill he didn’t finish. Spike stands. Follows him to the elevator.

They still don’t talk.

Clothes fall like breadcrumbs from the elevator, through Angel’s apartment and to his bedroom. In the silence, their rustling is almost too loud. Angel sits on the bed, then lies down on his side, facing away, hiding his pain. Spike hesitates for a second or ten before joining him. They don’t touch. They don’t speak. They just share a bed. Share grief. Share, later, touches that aren’t exactly caresses and kisses that taste like blood. Share comfort disguised as pleasure.

All of it with the clear if unvoiced understanding that they’ll never talk about this.


	5. Blue Volutes

Spike takes another drag on his cigarette and releases slowly, adding to the blue-gray smoke that surrounds him. His eyes follow the swirling volutes, and beyond them, beyond time, shapes appear, giving form to his memories.

A snowy landscape, the light of stars gleaming over pristine snow. Spike couldn’t tell where, anymore. Northern Europe, he thinks. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that if he listens just right, he can hear grunts and groans. The barn is just out of sight, but he remembers the smell of hay, the warmth of the sheepherder’s blood, and the sharpness of Angelus’ fangs tracing patterns on his skin.

Another drag. Spike wraps his free hand around his hardening cock. He doesn’t stroke, not yet, just holds, and remembers.

The smoke becomes steam, and his memory jumps through time. Public baths. A warm summer evening. Drums resounding like a heartbeat in the distance, accompanying each of Angelus’ thrusts. There are some shouts of anger, outrage and disgust around them. There will be more in a few moments, when they’re done and share a bloody kiss before slaughtering every last witness to their coupling.

A single slide of his hand over his cock, and Spike hisses through clenched teeth. He taps the ashes off and brings what’s left of his cigarette to his lips for a last drag.

The chimney needs to be swept. The fire roaring in the fireplace fills the dining room with a thick, wood-scented smoke that doesn’t bother the guests one bit. They sit around the table, glassy eyed and pale, waiting for the next course, maybe, or for their glasses to be refilled. They’re part of France’s elite, perfect manners ingrained in them since birth, and so they pretend they can’t hear the moans of the unexpected visitors that arrived a couple of hours earlier, pretend that they can’t see them rutting like animals on the thick carpet by the fireplace, pretend that they’re not shocked that these two men—their killers—are clutching at each other as though trying to become one.

With something that’s a cross between a sigh and a moan, Spike crushes the cigarette stub on the night table and tightens his hand over the slick head of his cock. Rolling onto his side, he runs a single finger over pale, cool skin, and wonders, as he closes the few inches between their bodies, if Angel remembers too.


End file.
